


you make things easier (let's work together)

by Serie11



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Exploration, F/F, Femslash, Fluff and Humor, Mission Fic, Teasing, Vala Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 21:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19483996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Aloy and Vala shirk work in order to track a machine, and spend a little quality time together.





	you make things easier (let's work together)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asymptotical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asymptotical/gifts).



Aloy wipes her forehead, careful to not let the movement dislodge her other hand from where’s gripping the cliff. Even though summer in the Sacred Lands isn’t nearly as hot as winter in the Carja lands, it’s still warm enough to work up a sweat. Especially when you’re in a situation like this one.

She looks up to find the next foothold in order to climb the next step; reaches out and clenches her fingers around the rock, feeling the gravel bite into her palm. If her fingers weren’t as strong as they are, she doubts that she’d even be able to do this, but shooting arrows every day for most of your life does wonders for strong hands.

She finally smacks her hand on the top of the cliff and pulls herself up, to lie panting on the ground.

“Time!” Vala yells. “Twenty five minutes and nineteen seconds.”

Aloy looks up at her as Vala comes to stand over her, grinning. “My focus says twenty four minutes and two seconds.”

“Well, I started from when you left here,” Vala says. “You said you wanted to know how long it’d take you to do a round trip.”

“No, I wanted to know how fast I could climb the cliff and get back here,” Aloy corrects her.

Vala holds out her hand and Aloy takes it, letting the other woman pull her to her feet. “Well, even if we go with my time, that’s got to be way faster than anyone else from the tribe,” Vala tells her. “You’re pretty crazy with the ledges! I was pretty nervous in some parts.”

“Ha, you should know me better than that now,” Aloy says. “I’ve never met a cliff I couldn’t climb.”

Vala laughs. “That’s true. But half the tribe wouldn’t even attempt this cliff. You’ve got more guts than all of them.”

“So does that mean it’s my turn to time you?” Aloy asks slyly.

“If only,” Vala mourns. “It’s past sun-high now, so we probably should already be back in the village. You know we have to help out with the reconstruction this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” Aloy admits. She stretches out her arms so they don’t tense up on her. She doesn’t think she can ever be too careful, not when there’s dangerous machines around every corner. “We can only have so much fun, huh?”

“We can come out here tomorrow,” Vala promises her. Aloy links her arm with Vala’s as she nods.

“Sounds like a plan. That just means that you have all afternoon to think about how there’s no way you can beat my time, though.”

“In your dreams, maybe,” Vala smirks. She lets go of Aloy’s arm to jump a fallen tree that blocks the path. “Hey, we didn’t come this way – was this tree downed during the invasion?”

“Hmm… I don’t think so,” Aloy says, putting a hand under her chin. “And it’s pretty big, too.” She scans the tree and spots a few claw marks near the bottom of the trunk. “Hey, look at that.”

She and Vala examine the claw marks. It looks like it’s from a particularly large machine. They exchange a look.

“Skip work to hunt this machine?” Vala asks hopefully.

Aloy unhooks her bow from her back. “That’s why I’ve got this baby.”

Vala grins at her, and grabs her own bow. Aloy sets a marker on the tracks and the two of them turn away from the path to head deeper into the forest.

“A sawtooth, do you think?” Vala asks.

“Maybe… but sawtooths generally turned pretty benign after we dealt with HADES,” Aloy muses. “I bet it’s a ravager.”

“Have you got your tearblast arrows?”

“Of course,” Aloy says.

“Good,” Vala says, dropping down a ledge. Aloy follows her, rolling out the landing. “I don’t want to get hit by any stray energy blasts. Those things _hurt.”_

Aloy nods her agreement. The two of them splash across a creek, and then start to wind their way up a ridgeline. The tracks are getting fresher, but they’re getting fairly close to the edge of the Sacred Lands.

“How did a ravager even get inside the walls without getting taken down?” Vala asks.

“There are less people manning the walls after the invasion,” Aloy reminds her. “And it could have come over the southern border. There aren’t any walls there, just conditions that are generally unsuitable for humans. But that doesn’t mean a particularly determined machine would be stopped. They can jump a lot higher than we can.”

“True,” Vala says. She stops in her tracks suddenly. “You hear that?”

Aloy scans the surrounding area, and sees the ravager’s outline appear a few hundred meters ahead of them. “Yep, I’ve got it,” she says. “Dead ahead. You want to head to the side, and I’ll distract it by hitting it head on?”

“You always want to hit it head on,” Vala grumbles. “Adrenaline junkie. I’ll stalk it, like a proper Nora hunter.”

“Good thing I’m not a proper Nora hunter then,” Aloy teases. Vala rolls her eyes but heads off to the side. Aloy crouches and approaches as quietly as she can, taking down a watcher when she’s sure it won’t bring any attention to herself. She carefully puts the lens of the watcher in her pocket and slinks forward into some tall grass, taking her time to make sure that Vala can get into place. A ravager isn’t an easy enemy to take down, but a pincer attack between the two of them should be easy enough, especially if Aloy can take off it’s canon before it even knows she’s there.

She comes to a stop and threads two extra tearblast arrows into her bow. There’s a few more watchers in the area, and a herd of striders that she can just see through the foliage, but the ravager is her main priority. It’s stalking in a circle agitatedly, clawing the ground and then swiping at a tree. Aloy winces as the tree groans and it slowly tips to the side. The Embrace has suffered so much with the invasion – the trees that hadn’t been affected should be protected as much as possible.

She takes a breath in and aims her arrows as the ravager comes to a stop. She looses them and watches in satisfaction as they land in the canon. She uses the precious seconds she has before they explode to change her ammo, and then braces herself. The canon comes flying off as the _boom_ of the explosion sends a flock of geese flying away through the trees, and the strider herd in the distance startles and sprints off, taking most of the watchers with it.

Aloy comes out of the long grass running, whooping loudly to draw the attention of the ravager. It fixates on her and starts running. She comes to a more open area and pivots to face it down, waiting to the last second to roll out of the way of its giant leap. She’d forgotten how _fast_ these things are. Being in the Embrace for a few months after being on the road for so long hasn’t made her rusty, but it has dimmed her memories of how exactly these types of big machines move.

An arrow comes out of nowhere and lands in the freeze canister. Aloy jumps back as it explodes, leaving the ravager covered in a coating of frost and unable to move. Aloy carefully loads up a hard point arrow, firing at the ravagers weak points. It growls and slowly turns to face her, but Aloy grins at it as she spots Vala behind it, hoisting the canon on her hip.

“I’m clear!” she yells, sprinting to the side. In response she hears the whirr of the canon, followed by the sounds of metal tearing and shearing. She looks back in time to see the ravager fall into a bundle of parts, and she can’t stop the grin she feels spreading across her face.

Vala yells as she takes down the two watchers that had come to try and flank them, the canon spitting and roaring. In the quiet aftermath the two of them stand across the field from each other, smoking metal piles in between them.

“Nice!” Aloy yells at her. It’s still… strange, working with another person like this. The only other person she’d hunted with as much was Rost, but she always used to defer to him when they hunted together. With Vala, they just… work together. It’s much more efficient with two people, and Aloy gets to charge head first into more situations when she would otherwise have to sit for hours on end, studying habits and picking off enemies as they reaches the outskirts of the area. Vala makes everything a lot easier.

Vala is already looting the watchers, so Aloy steps over to the ravager. With the canon gone and most of the outside shredded by its own weaponry, she doesn’t expect to find too much. Still, she extracts several loops of good wire, and way more shards than she needs in the Sacred Lands. The Nora don’t have much that she needs to buy, but she supposes if she ever goes back to Meridian she can use them to nab whatever neat armour upgrades the merchants have come up with. Or just buy some good food for herself and whoever else she brings. She chuckles to herself as she digs through the remnants of the ravager, imagining half a dozen Nora at an Oseram inn, trying the strange food.

Vala trots over to her side and nudges the side of the ravager with her boot. “Why do you think it was this deep in the Sacred Lands?”

“I don’t know,” Aloy admits. “All the machines have been thrown off track when we defeated HADES. Things are probably just going to go wrong sometimes.”

“Hmm,” Vala hums. “I guess. We should probably still tell my mother when we get back, though. She can alert everyone to be on the watch for other big machines. It would be bad if one of the braves came across one of these by themselves. Not everyone is as good as well are.”

“No,” Aloy says. She’s seen people get mowed down by ravagers before, and she’s sure that if the machines continue to exist around other humans, she’ll see it again. They’re dangerous machines.

Vala stretches lazily. “It looks like there’s only one here though, which is great for the rest of the valley, but not so great for us. We’ll probably still make it back in time to do some work if we leave now.”

Aloy checks the time on her Focus. Sure enough, this venture hasn’t taken them nearly as long as it would need to have taken to last an entire shift of work.

“Well, we can head back,” Aloy muses. “Or we could hang around here for a bit, check around the corners, make sure that there aren’t any others in the area. We wouldn’t want anyone else to come across one by themselves – like you said, not everyone is as prepared as us.”

Vala starts to smile, and Aloy tucks the rest of the loot into her pockets as she stands and turns to her. Vala throws her arms over Aloy’s shoulders, and Aloy leans her head to the side as Vala leans in to kiss her. Aloy tastes the slight salt of her sweat on her soft lips, and runs a hand up Vala’s back to bring her closer. Vala closes her arms around Aloy’s neck and Aloy rests her hands on Vala’s waist.

“That sounds like a very good idea,” Vala says when she leans back. “Some of the watchers escaped to the north… they might have some connection to the ravagers. We should track them down and make sure that they’re taken care of. For the safety of all the other Nora.”

“For the safety of all the other Nora,” Aloy agrees, shouldering her bow so it’s out of the way and she has her hands free. And if she uses one of her free hands to intertwine her fingers with Vala’s as they start walking to where they last saw the watchers – well, it’s only the two of them there. No one else needs to know. 


End file.
